Limited progress on nonproliferation (Schorr / ChrSciMon)

By Daniel Schorr

WASHINGTON – President Bush calls Kim Jong Il a "tyrant." Kim Jong Il calls President Bush a "philistine." That's about the state of play on the nuclear nonproliferation front. <snip>

The 187 countries that have signed the 1970 nonproliferation treaty are meeting in New York, as they do every five years, to review progress in reducing the nuclear danger. Not very much. Libya has resigned from the nuclear club. North Korea and Iran are almost surely on their way to becoming new members.

And the US, which is working on new bunker-busting nuclear bombs, wants sanctions against North Korea and Iran.

The current issue of Foreign Policy magazine features a cover article by former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, headlined "Apocalypse Soon: Why American nukes are immoral, illegal and dreadfully dangerous." Mr. McNamara sweated out the 1962 Cuban missile crisis with President Kennedy - the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war. <snip>

The 187 countries that have signed the 1970 nonproliferation treaty are meeting in New York, as they do every five years, to review progress in reducing the nuclear danger. Not very much. Libya has resigned from the nuclear club. North Korea and Iran are almost surely on their way to becoming new members.

And the US, which is working on new bunker-busting nuclear bombs, wants sanctions against North Korea and Iran.

The current issue of Foreign Policy magazine features a cover article by former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, headlined "Apocalypse Soon: Why American nukes are immoral, illegal and dreadfully dangerous." Mr. McNamara sweated out the 1962 Cuban missile crisis with President Kennedy - the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war. <snip>

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0506/p09s01-cods.html